WUQI licenses Ceva-Waves WiFi 6 IP to power new chip

Ceva-Waves, the WiFi division of semiconductor company Ceva, announced the deployment of its prebuilt WiFi 6 STA IP platform in a new Bluetooth/WiFi combo chip from WUQI Microelectronics. This integration gives the WQ9201 chip its compact size and a low-power WiFi 6 modem. Ceva is also providing a FullMAC software stack, freeing up the CPU in WUQI's wireless chip to efficiently handle the demands of protocol switching and coordination between WiFi and Bluetooth.

Thanks to Ceva doing the heavy-lifting, the WQ9201 wireless SoC manages a proprietary dual-band RF architecture to operate on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. WUQI also uses a custom CMOS power amplifier to reduce power consumption in battery-powered devices. This focus on miniaturization and power efficiency allows the WQ9201 to have one of the smallest footprints in the industry, while still offering strong baseband performance. 

WUQI's chip won the 2024 China Core Excellent Technology Innovation award, and is used in consumer electronics and smart home gadgets from brands like Honor, China Mobile and TP-link. Qiang Gu, head of WUQI's WiFi product line, has expressed that the WQ9201 will be able to leverage the performance of Ceva's WiFi 6 IP to deliver "unprecedented WiFi throughput efficiency" in tackling the challenges of HD streaming and IoT.